In a press release issued ahead of its earnings call later today HP has announced that it will discontinue development of dedicated webOS hardware such as the Pre phone series and the TouchPad tablet series, following this morning’s Bloomberg report that stated that the company would be selling off its PC manufacturing business while acquiring a new software development house. Below, the relevant passage from the release:

HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

The elimination of webOS hardware development follows the previous upward demotion of Jon Rubenstein last month in favor of the previous head of the HP Americas group responsible for hardware sales and development. With this latest move along with the possible spinoff of the Personal Systems Group and the Autonomy acquisition, HP stands to make the same moves as IBM did in the earlier part of the decade, moving from being a hardware manufacturer and focusing solely on software and services. The conglomerate is expected to elaborate more later this afternoon in its earnings call, scheduled for 2PM PST. Stay tuned to PhoneNews.com for more on this developing story.

Palm was such a great brand. I had the original Palm Pilot, a bunch of Treo’s, the Pre, and now its gone. Sad. WebOS is a great OS, it just never had enough support from the developers and then HP just botched things even further and now its dead.